Free Though Murder Has No Tongue by James Jessen Badal Page B

came to Cleveland from Chicago seven years later to clear up details related to his mother’s estate, he stayed with his uncle Frank—never to be seen again! (There is some confusion here. The
Cleveland News
reported that the letter had actually come from Sheriff E. R. Burkholder of Wheaton, Illinois.) The implications of all this remained unstated; clearly, though, O’Donnell saw Nettie Taylor’s suggestions of a mysterious death and an unexplained disappearance in the family as further proof that Frank Dolezal was a vicious murderer. But, cautioned the
Press,
“Neither the sheriff’s office in Chardon nor the county prosecutor could find any record of the death of a Mrs. Nigrin.” Alarm bells of some sort should have sounded at this point, but they apparently didn’t. (See the epilogue for a full discussion of the Taylor letter and the fates of Anna and Joseph Nigrin.)
    The real bombshell of the morning, however, was the sheriff’s announcement that Frank Dolezal had made two unsuccessful suicide attempts overnight. At around 12:30 A.M ., he tried to hang himself with his shirt from a hook in the wall of his cell, only to be foiled when Chief Jailer Michael Kilbane discovered him and pulled him down, ripping the shirt in the process. Reportedly, Dolezal tried again at about 4:30 A.M ., this time fashioning a noose from his shoelaces. Apparently, however, they weren’t sufficiently strong to bear his weight; Deputies Nick Miller and John Mulroy found him lying, stunned, on the cell floor. Again, though no public statements were made, the unspoken subtext was clear: withering under an unrelenting series of nonstop interrogations, a guilty, desperate man had decided to end it all rather than face the rigors of the justice system. (Among the coroner’s papers, there is a signed deposition dated July 10 in which Dolezal admits his attempts at suicide, but the document remains troubling for several reasons. Had he been coerced into signing it? Given his questionable commandof English, did he even understand what he was signing? Was it standard procedure to take such a deposition under the circumstances? If so, it would logically follow that there would be some sort of official form. The existing document, however, is not an official form; it is simply a typed statement with the heading “Criminal Courts Building” appearing at the top.)
    But the story that Dolezal would be given a lie detector test in the late afternoon under the stewardship of the East Cleveland Police Department became the most newsworthy event of the day. The east side municipality owned an early version of the Keeler polygraph—named for Leonard Keeler of Northwestern University, the man who had perfected the machine and was widely regarded as the best in the business at administering the tests and interpreting the results. At around 3:00 P.M ., sheriff’s deputies escorted a dazed Frank Dolezal out of the county jail to an official car for the drive out to the municipality on the city’s east side. Until this ceremoniously staged appearance, reporters hadn’t had many opportunities to get a look at the sheriff’s prisoner; staring vacantly ahead and stumbling slightly, Dolezal allowed himself to be steered toward the waiting automobile while flashes exploded around him aspress photographers jockeyed for position. Suddenly, alarmed murmurs began to spread through the crowd of onlookers. Where had the clearly visible black eye come from, and why was he holding his side in obvious discomfort and pain? Dolezal had injured himself, explained the sheriff, when he had fallen on his face during his second suicide attempt. But the
Press
was dubious. “This seemed unlikely in view of the instinctive and automatic reflex action which makes anyone falling forward throw his arms out before him to protect his face.” And when reporters realized that Dolezal’s shirt—the same